Attachments and Loyalties
by TolkienScholar
Summary: Oneshot. Qui-Gon does not want to speak with Yoda about losing Xanatos to the Dark Side on Telos IV. But avoid the Jedi Grand Master indefinitely, he cannot.


**Written for the Dark and Light challenge on like firing's forum The Lightsaber. Dark Side, Prompt 04: Write about a master and an apprentice.** **Also fits the Caesar's Challenge: Level Two, Prompt 09: Tergiversate.**

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 **Disclaimer:** _ **Star Wars**_ **is the property of George Lucas and of Disney. No copyright infringement is intended.**

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"Hmm. Many a conversation, I have had in this room."

Startled, Qui-Gon forced himself not to turn toward the source of the voice. Lost in thought, he had not sensed Master Yoda's coming. It was too late now to escape him; one did not simply walk away from the Grand Master of the Jedi Order. Avoid him, yes, that could be done—for a while, at least. Evading this conversation had been one of the only two subjects occupying Qui-Gon's mind in the past several days. But now that he had been found, there was no getting away.

Leaning his weight on his staff, Master Yoda hobbled slowly into view. He turned his head from side to side as he walked as though admiring the foliage of the Room of a Thousand Fountains, never attempting to meet Qui-Gon's eyes.

At last, he climbed onto the bench beside him. Qui-Gon held himself still, his muscles tense and his jaw clenched, a patient waiting for the medic to probe his wounds.

"Hmm, yes," Yoda began again. "A favorite place this is. When in turmoil the mind is, a place it seeks where the body can be at peace. But peace to the mind, rarely does this room bring, for all its beauty."

"Perhaps that is because for some things, there is no peace," Qui-Gon answered quietly.

"No!" Yoda thumped his staff on the ground. "Always to be found in the Force, peace is."

Qui-Gon did not respond. He had searched the Force for peace, but he had found none. The Force itself seemed to be evading him, slipping further out of his grasp the harder he tried to reach for it.

"Think, do you, that you are alone? That you are the only Jedi ever to lose a Padawan?"

Qui-Gon turned to stare at him. Yoda's brown eyes blinked back at him benignly, holding neither sympathy nor accusation.

"Or something is it which only to others happens? Impossible that it should happen to Qui-Gon Jinn?"

The thought had crossed his mind. He and Xanatos had seemed the perfect Master-Padawan team—their every move in tandem—each thought, each emotion, each breath accessible to the other. Xanatos had become an extension of himself, and he of Xanatos. Other teams had admired and coveted their connection. One simply did not lose a Padawan with whom one had such a relationship.

But Qui-Gon had.

"Happened many times, it has," Yoda continued. "Many Jedi there are who have left the Order. Hard to accept, always it is. But healing will there be in time. Move on, you must."

"I cannot."

They were words that should never have passed his lips. That phrase meant attachment. That phrase meant that he was in violation of the Jedi Code, a position in which he had often found himself, but never so flagrantly. That phrase was basis enough for Master Yoda to recommend his suspension from the Order. He should have been worried, or at the very least angry with himself for so exposing his weakness. But a leaden weight had sunk into his chest, crushing worry and anger and leaving him empty of all but a heavy despair.

A note of warning entered Master Yoda's voice. "Beware attachment, you must, Qui-Gon."

Attachment. The great Jedi taboo. When had he first realized that he was becoming attached to his Padawan? Was it when he had realized that he was so attuned to Xanatos's presence that he could sense his apprentice's heartbeat? Was it the first time Xanatos had saved his life, or the second, or the third? Or perhaps when, barely thirteen years old, he had vanished from Qui-Gon's side to save twin girls from a Senate building on Gala that was collapsing from an explosion, and nearly died from the burns afterward? Or perhaps it was even before that. Perhaps the attachment had formed when he had brought him back to the Temple as a bright-eyed four-year-old, always eager to please, and fought the Council to get him into the Order despite his age. Certainly it was then he had decided that whatever happened, the boy would be his Padawan as soon as he was old enough. Beware attachment? That warning had come far too late, perhaps as much as twelve years too late. Though Qui-Gon knew in his heart that he would hardly have listened if it had.

"Set many on the path to the Dark Side, attachment has—"

"Has it?" Qui-Gon's tone was bitter. "Did it? That isn't how I recall the story. I did not lose my Padawan because I was too attached to him. I lost him because we were sent on a mission that placed Xanatos and his father on opposite sides of a war."

And Master Yoda had sent them on that mission. The accusation hovered unspoken between them. Qui-Gon had gone too far, and he was going to go farther still. He had believed before the mission that Master Yoda was wrong; now, too late, he was sure of it. He intended to make sure Yoda knew that, and if he was expelled from the Order for it, so be it. Despair gave him courage.

Yet Master Yoda did not even acknowledge the accusation. "Mm. Proven my point, you have. Attachment of father to son—dangerous it is. Whether by blood or adoption."

Whether father and son, or Master and Padawan.

"To the right and the good, a Jedi's allegiance should be—"

"He was a boy!" Qui-Gon's voice rang out across the Room of a Thousand Fountains, echoed by the cries of birds startled into flight. "He was only a boy! Can a boy be expected to be faithful to an ideal over his own father?"

"A boy, yes." Master Yoda's voice never changed in volume. "So I told you when request for him promotion to Jedi Knight, you did."

"He was ready!" Qui-Gon insisted. "His knowledge, his attunement to the Force, his combat skills—I could not hold him back when he had shown such readiness."

"More to readiness than skill, there is. Wisdom, discernment—"

"Show me a Jedi—a full-grown, mature Jedi—who could have withstood such a task as you set him," Qui-Gon demanded. "I do not recall your requiring such a thing of me in my own Trials."

"Never any doubts were there about you, Qui-Gon. Unfaithful to the rules you often were, but never unfaithful to what was right. Clear to all, your loyalties were. So certain of Xanatos, we could not be."

Qui-Gon did not answer. He had been certain, so certain he would have wagered his own life on Xanatos's loyalty. He knew now that he would have lost. And he wished he had never found out.

"He might have served the Galaxy for decades and never had to face that choice," he said softly at last, the vehemence drained from his voice.

"No," Yoda replied with equal softness. "Always a mission there will be that will test a Jedi's true loyalty. If today it is not, tomorrow it will be. If not as a Padawan, then as a Knight. Better to know, it is."

"No," said Qui-Gon. "It is not." He stood and walked away.


End file.
